


before it leaves a stain

by scepticallyopenminded



Series: 30 Day Lyrics Challenge - 2017 [16]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Depression, Exhaustion, Gen, Killing, Mental Health Issues, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scepticallyopenminded/pseuds/scepticallyopenminded
Summary: Because he’s twenty-three, but he’s already been forced to kill in his life. And it’s always forced; he couldn’t imagine that he would do any of these things unless these things were threatening him and his pack and his family and his friends and his town. But that doesn’t make it any easier. It doesn’t make it easier that he’s killed evil supernatural creatures, things that the police and the government and the law couldn’t imagine handling and it doesn’t help that his entire pack is just as guilty.This though – this had been the final fucking straw. The final one. The one Stiles doesn’t know if he can come back from, and he knows he was scaring Scott and Kira and Lydia on the drive back, silent and staring out the window, driving on autopilot.As soon as he gets inside his apartment, he falls onto the couch, not even bothering to turn on the lights. Pale pink floods his living room from the setting sun and all Stiles can do is stare at the ceiling, wondering where it ends.





	before it leaves a stain

**Author's Note:**

> based on Dresden Doll's Glass Slipper:
> 
> "How many crimes can I try spotting dry before it leaves a stain"
> 
> This is an accompaniment to my WIP [everyone's at it](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4322871) from the first time Stiles realizes how fucked up the pack is, which he talks about in chapter 4 with Derek.

Stiles is _tired_.

He’s so fucking exhausted of it _all_. He’s twenty-three and he’s _done_ with life and he wants nothing more than to just _die_.

There’s so much the pack has done that’s good, he knows it; they’ve saved people’s lives, they’ve saved Beacon Hills more than a few times. The people who live here owe the pack a lot more than many of them will ever know and Stiles is _proud_ of it, damn it. He’s proud of how well adjusted the pack is now, and he’s proud of how much they’ve all grown in the past few years and how much they’ve all grown _together_ and he’s infinitely happy about the way that they all fell together again after college, everyone coming back to Beacon Hills and fitting together seamlessly as if they’d never left.

But Stiles can’t deal with _this end_ of it – the fighting and the _killing_.

Because he’s _twenty-three_ , but he’s already been _forced_ to kill in his life. And it’s always forced; he couldn’t imagine that he would do any of these things unless these _things_ were threatening him and his pack and his family and his friends and his _town_. But that doesn’t make it any easier. It doesn’t make it easier that he’s killed evil supernatural creatures, things that the police and the government and the law couldn’t _imagine_ handling and it doesn’t help that his entire pack is just as guilty.

_This_ though – this had been the final fucking straw. The _final_ one. The one Stiles doesn’t know if he can come back from, and he knows he was scaring Scott and Kira and Lydia on the drive back, silent and staring out the window, driving on autopilot.

As soon as he gets inside his apartment, he falls onto the couch, not even bothering to turn on the lights. Pale pink floods his living room from the setting sun and all Stiles can do is stare at the ceiling, wondering where it _ends_.

He was a fucking _child_. A terrible, evil, supernatural child with powers beyond anything they’d faced thus far, and sure, he was killing left and right and felt absolutely no remorse for it, but he was still a _child_.

They’d killed a child.

Stiles cannot _do this_. He can’t kill a fucking _child_ and call it a day.

And he knows the rest of the pack can’t, either; Kira had been uncharacteristically quiet and leaning in on herself, Scott’s jaw set as steel, Lydia refusing as always to break but her eyes had definitely been wet.

But they also set it as a – necessary evil. Killing isn’t fucking fun; nobody thinks it is, and it’s a last resort every time they go out, even though they still call themselves “hunters”. Scott had _said so_ , fucking called it when they’d gotten back into California, long stretch of road still in front of them.

“We didn’t have a choice,” he’d said, clenching his jaw, and Stiles couldn’t even bring it upon himself to glance over. He doesn’t bother looking in the rearview window to see how Kira and Lydia react to this, because he knows what they look like. He has, too.

Agreeing. Faces set in stone but they’re eyes would say it all: _we really, really didn’t_.

Stiles couldn’t do that, not right then.

Not even right now.

It’s just – he _sees_ it now, doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before. How massively _fucked up_ they are. Not in like the – “we’re fucked in our own minds”, which is true enough anyway, as they’re all suffering from some forms of depression and PTSD and they’ve all suffered through more trauma in their lifetimes than most _ER doctors_ see and they all have nightmares sometimes and.

But it’s a different kind of fucked up. They’re – god – the pack is _no better_ than all the things they’ve killed. They killed the changeling because he was killing other people, but how the _hell_ does that make them better than he was?

How can they justify all the killing they’ve done? The harpy, the coven they’d taken out back in senior year of high school, the succubus Stiles and Scott had killed at UCLA during their sophomore year after she sucked the souls of five of their neighbours. The many, many others.

Maybe they’d all been justified. But that doesn’t mean that they, the pack, are any better than any of those they’d killed. They, too, were killers. They aren’t morally superior to anyone, aren’t any fucking better.

Stiles doesn’t know how he didn’t see it until now, how it took killing a _child_ for him to realize that he is just as bad.

He doesn’t know if he can come back from this. As it is, it’s night time, the moonlight shining into the apartment and he’s been laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling for hours. And Stiles doesn’t – how is he supposed to get past this? This feeling of utter hopelessness. He doesn’t know if he can.

He doesn’t know if he can go on.

They’re truly, honestly fucked up, the entire pack. They’re fucked up, aren’t any better than the supposedly evil creatures they’ve killed. They’re – _they’re evil_.

And Stiles – he doesn’t know how to deal with that knowledge.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at [asocialfoxpaw](http://asocialfoxpaw.tumblr.com)
> 
> pls don't post my stuff on goodreads or like sites thanks!


End file.
